Stacy Mitchhart Band

Stacy Mitchhart’s musical journey began in his native Cincinnati, Ohio,  in a home where jazz guitar masters like Wes Montgomery and Johnny Smith  were played on the stereo. Therefore it was natural that he gravitated  to the six-string. As a child he saw the outrageous Little Richard on a  TV show and was captivated by his showmanship. Little Richard looked and  acted differently than anybody he had ever been exposed to. Today,  Mitchhart has created his own brand of showmanship that brings audiences  back again and again.

“I heard Springsteen,  Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, but that stuff never moved me,” he recounts.  “When I saw Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland and B.B. King, I knew what I wanted to  do. Since then, my playing’s just gotten more focused and aggressive  with time.”  Another serious inspiration was Cincinnati guitarist and  singer Frank Hedges, a musical preacher whose sons were also in  Mitchhart’s first band. “He played guitar in a strange, almost drum like  style, which taught me to concentrate on the groove.”  Mitchhart  has always been a bandleader. He developed his sound and stagecraft at  the helm of four groups in Cincinnati — climbing the pinnacle of the  city’s blues scene. He also began his recording career there, with  1993’s Blues Transfusion. Since then he’s made a dozen more albums,  culminating until now in 2009’s critically heralded Grown Ass Man and  2010’s Live From B.B. King’s. By the early ’90s he was the top blues act  in Cincinnati. But when he played his first gigs in Nashville 18 years  ago, he knew he’d found his musical home.  “The very first time I came  to Nashville I sold 24 CDs off the bandstand and the audience was  amazing,” Mitchhart recalls. “They were alive!” In short order he was  offered the house band slot at Printers Alley’s famed Bourbon Street  Blues and Boogie Bar.

“Very quickly, because there  are so many tourists in Nashville, I realized I was seeing different  people in the audience from all over the world every single night, and  because this is Music City, they were really coming to listen,” he  continues. “The Stacy Mitchhart Band has become known as one of the top  live acts in Nashville because our sound is different and we bring a lot  of energy to the stage.”  Nearly two decades later, that hasn’t  changed. Mitchhart’s name is still synonymous with “blues” in the most  rapidly growing city along the Cumberland River and he’s still playing  200 of his annual dates without leaving home. Thanks to the  international following he’s largely built in Nashville at Bourbon  Street Blues and Boogie Bar, Mitchhart has also performed in eight other  countries.  “I’ve played everything from 50,000 seat, sold-out arenas  to 5,000-to-15,000 attendance blues festivals to 1,500-seat theaters to  250-seat clubs to a 40-seat grocery store to backyard barbecues and  weddings to corporate parties,” he relates. “The bottom line is that  every gig is important to the people that booked you and the audience  always deserves your best.  “The truth is,” Mitchhart continues, “I’m  more comfortable onstage entertaining than I am in my own living room.  I've spent my whole life there. And I feel like the stripped down  approach of this new album lets other people get inside my music almost  as deep as I do every night when I’m on stage.”